The Descendants

Written by Rebekah Benoit
Friday, 09 December 2011 10:39

The Descendants by Kaui Hart HemmingsBook Review: The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings

When I saw this book in Chapters, and noticed the words “Now a major motion picture starring George Clooney,” I almost put it back on the shelf. Books made into movies (and then republished with pics of the handsome leading man on the cover) usually make me balk. I think it’s because I always feel compelled to watch the movie, and am inevitably disappointed, which somehow seems to spoil the story for me. It happened with Jodie Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, and again with Jennifer Weiner’s In Her Shoes, and as a result, I’m a bit gunshy. It’s a bit like seeing your favourite eclectic little café renovated into a Starbucks.

On the other hand, sometimes movie treatments of the books I love have made me love the story all the more. This was definitely the case with Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha and Philippa Gregory’sThe Other Boleyn Girl. But these seem to be more the exceptions than the rule.

But I digress. Not seeing anything else that appealed on that particular display table at Chapters, I flipped the book open and perused the dust jacket, and found myself grudgingly tossing the book into my shopping bag. The Descendants turned out to be a compelling, wryly humorous and surprisingly tender story about family, love and loss.

Matt King has always been an absentee father of sorts. The busy attorney also happens to be one of the largest land owners in Hawaii thanks to a generations-old inheritance that dates back to the now-defunct Hawaiian monarchy. He’s always been content to hand off the parenting off his two daughters, 17-year old Alex and 10-year old Scottie, to his wife Joanie, a feisty catalogue model with a taste for adventure. While all has not been perfect in the tropical paradise the family calls home (Alex is a recovering drug addict banished to a private school after a falling out with her mother), Matt chalks up the problems to typical family dysfunction and assumes his wife will work things out, as she always does.

But when Joanie is critically injured in a boating accident and lies in a coma, Matt finds himself alone on ‘daddy duty’ for the first time. When it becomes apparent that Joanie’s coma is irreversible and the family must pull it itself together and say goodbye, Matt recalls Alex from school and prepares to tell his girls that their mother is dying.

It’s not as easy as simply saying goodbye, however. As Joanie’s life support is removed and the family is forced to watch her fade away, Matt comes across disturbing and incontrovertible evidence that his wife was having an affair and planning to divorce him. It’s hard for Matt to reconcile his beautiful wife, the love of his life, with this new picture of an adulterous liar, and even more difficult for him to keep this new information from his girls.

As Joanie’s final breath draws closer, Matt and the girls, along with Alex’s sarcastic, pot-smoking new boyfriend, Sid, set off on an odyssey to find Joanie’s lover and give him a chance to say goodbye. It’s part tribute to a dying woman and part opportunity for revenge. As Matt searches the beaches for the man his wife truly loved, he finally comes to know his daughters, the two strangers who have existed on the periphery of his life for so long.

Probably my favourite feature of author Kaui Hart Hemming’s book is the fact that it made me laugh out loud several times with its dry, cynical humour. Hemmings’ comedic timing and sarcastic wit served as the perfect counterpoint to the book’s more emotional moments, and the end of the story was genuine and real, rather than the stereotypical Hollywood happy ending that I was anticipating.

I liked this one, despite my initial misgivings. Will I see the movie? Maybe…or maybe I’ll just wait for CJ to review it.

My rating is 4 teacups.